Summary
The doctrine by which, on Moses’s account, colonizers from the Spanish conquest onward assured themselves that killing innocents was permissible as a side effect of carrying out a moral end, like self-defense (More than Genocide, line 131).
Details
- Moses pairs it with reprisals justified as defensive “self-preservation” against indigenous resistance, including against noncombatants (line 131), and with the later legal uncertainty over civilians killed “incidentally” in attacks on legitimate military targets (line 171).